I'm back into that mode where I just don't have much to say here, though I suppose I could also be a victim of not being able to say much lately.

The post Hurricane/Tropical Storm power outages in my area, followed up with being relatively busy at work, followed up with more help in moving my wife and her daughter out of her old place and into our home has just not given me that much time to sit down and compose any thoughts on any topics I might wish to rant and rave about.

I'm up early today for work, composing these thoughts at an hour that I'd rather be in bed sleeping, but I wasn't able to stay comfortable last night anyway as the latest round of post tropical storm rains that are in my area had apparently knocked down some more power lines and knocked the power off at my home over night.  I'm hopeful that I won't find that the power will be out longer than was anticipated (they expected to get it back online by about this time, hopefully they are correct in that estimate).  If the power stays out longer then I'm staring at the loss of yet more food that was in the fridge/freezer and the costs associated with same.

I'm glad that my family is able to absorb such costs, though I know there are plenty of my neighbors and others in the area that are stretched too thin and really can't afford to see their food budgets so badly impacted.

I could continue here and turn this into a rant about how the government really needs to do more to spur job growth in this country, but I'm just not sure what else they would do.  I could suggest a few things (cutting taxes, or at least giving out credits for hiring employees that have been out of work for long periods of time might be among them), but all have costs associated and at this point it seems people really don't want to pay for anything and would rather just not do anything instead.

The viscious cycle that is the job market is depressing currently.  Too many employers are sitting on cash because they fear we could be headed into, or already are in, another recession.  They are waiting for consumers to spend and consumers aren't spending much because apparently the consumers that would have been spending are the very same persons that are currently out of work.  Uh, gee, imagine that.

I don't like being anti-business (really, I don't), but I have had many head slapping moments thinking about how stupid some employers have been in cutting back on their staffing levels.  The CEO's and CFO's have been too worried about pleasing stockholders and banking profits rather than slowing down a bit and realizing that the cuts they make on their own work-force are part of the larger "circle of life" that buy goods and services from other employers whose employees in turn buy goods and services from them.  Perhaps if some of those employers had been less "Chicken-little-ish" and more "bullish" on the economy we'd not have incredibly high unemployment and we might be seeing an expanding economy rather than a stagnant one.